Arctic Drift (Dirk Pitt 20)

It took less than five minutes for Murdock to wake and assemble his startled crew. A few men joked about trading Moose-head for Budweiser and the Red Green Show for American Idol, but most remained quiet, sensing the danger of trying to escape without incident.

Outside the building, Roman held his observation post, eyeing the dock for a possible Canadian reaction. But the stealth assault had succeeded without alarm, and the Canadian militia aboard the Polar Dawn remained unaware of the pending escape.

Once he received a ready signal from Bojorquez, Roman wasted no time in getting the men moving. Slipping out the back of the building in groups of three and four, they were led through the shadows to the front of the dock and the moored Zodiacs. The two boats filled quickly, but Roman remained on edge as Bojorquez radioed that he was escorting the final group.

Roman waited until he spotted Bojorquez making his way across the Athabasca Shipping property before taking a final look down the dock. The waterfront was still deserted on the bitter-cold night, the only sound that of some distant pumps and generators. Roman rose and shuffled quietly toward the boats, feeling confident that the mission would succeed. Extracting the Polar Dawn’s crew without alerting the Canadian forces was the touchy part of the operation, and they had apparently pulled it off. Now it was a simple matter of making their way back to the airfield and waiting for the rescue planes to arrive.

He moved past the dark barge to find Bojorquez climbing into one of the boats with the last of the Coast Guard crewmen. There were thirty-six men serving aboard the Polar Dawn, and they had all been accounted for. As the Zodiacs were untied, Roman quickly scampered off the dock and into one of the boats.

“Get us out of here,” he whispered to a soldier manning the electric motor.

“I’d suggest staying right where you are,” thundered a loud voice from up high.

As the words echoed across the water, a bank of halogen lights suddenly flashed on overhead. The intense lights temporarily blinded Roman as he realized that the beams originated from the stern of the barge. He instinctively raised his weapon to shoot but refrained when he heard Bojorquez suddenly barking, “Don’t fire, don’t fire.”

His eyes adjusting to the bright lights, Roman looked up and counted no fewer than six men leaning over the rail of the barge with automatic weapons leveled at the two boats. With his own men following suit, Roman reluctantly lowered his rifle. He peered up at a large man who smiled at him from the barge.

“That’s the smart move,” Clay Zak said. “Now, why don’t you men step back onto the dock and we’ll get acquainted?”

Roman looked from Zak to the automatic weapons pointed at his men and nodded. The surprise ambush just as they were about to escape made Roman as mad as a pit bull. Rising to climb off the boat, he gazed angrily at his captors, then dejectedly spit into the wind.

54

GUNNERY SERGEANT MIKE TIPTON STARED INTENTLY through the night vision binoculars, scanning the jagged ice ridge that descended to Coronation Gulf. Though the frozen eyepiece numbed his brow, he held his gaze, hoping for some sign of movement. He finally lowered the glasses when another man crawled up the ice ridge beside him.

“Any sign of the captain?” the soldier asked, a young corporal whose face was hidden behind a cold-weather mask.

Tipton shook his head, then looked at his watch. “They’re late, and our aircraft are due in twenty minutes.”

“Do you want me to break radio silence and issue a call?”

“Go ahead. Find out what’s going on and when they’ll be here. We can’t keep those birds on the ground for long.”

He rose to his feet and turned toward the makeshift airfield. “I’m going to activate the beacons.”

Tipton walked quietly away. He didn’t want to hear the radio call. Instinctively, he knew that something had gone wrong. Roman had made an early start. He should have been back with the Polar Dawn’s crew nearly an hour ago. They certainly should have been within sight by now. Roman was too good a commander, the team too well trained for something not to have gone dramatically wrong.

Tipton reached one end of the airfield and turned on a pair of battery-operated blue lights. He then paced to the opposite end of the coarsely graded runway and activated a second pair of lights. Returning to the base camp, he found the corporal vainly calling the assault team over a portable radio, as one other soldier stood lookout nearby.

“I’m not getting any response,” the corporal reported.

“Keep trying until the planes have landed.” Tipton faced both men. “We have our orders. We’ll evacuate whether the rest of the team is here or not.”

Tipton stepped closer to the soldier on lookout, who was barely distinguishable from the corporal in his heavy white parka.

“Johnson, instruct the pilots to hold for five minutes. I’ll be on the ridge keeping lookout for the captain. Just don’t leave without me,” he glowered.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

A minute later, a faint buzz split the frozen night air. The sound grew louder until evolving into the recognizable whine of an aircraft, followed by another. The two Ospreys flew without navigation lights and were invisible against the black sky. Specially modified for expanded range, the two aircraft had flown nearly seven hundred miles from an airstrip in Eagle, Alaska, just over the Yukon border. Skimming low over the tundra, they had easily evaded detection flying over one of Canada’s most remote regions.

Tipton reached the top of the ridge and looked back toward the runway as the first plane made its approach. Waiting until it was just fifty feet off the ground before hitting its landing lights, the Osprey came in low and slow, jostling to a quick stop on the uneven surface well short of the perimeter blue lights. The pilot quickly gunned the plane to the end of the runway and whipped it around in a tight arc. An instant later, the second Osprey touched down, bouncing roughly over the ice, before taking its place in line for takeoff behind the first Osprey.

Tipton turned his attention to the gulf, scanning the shoreline again with his binoculars.

“Roman, where are you?” he hissed aloud, angry at the team’s disappearance.

But there was no sign of the rubber boats or the men who had sailed off in them. Only an empty expanse of sea and ice filled the lenses. He patiently waited five minutes and then five more, but it was a futile gesture. The assault team was not coming back.